


Never Let Me Go

by buttcat



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Dean in Hell, Dubious Consent Due To Identity Issues, M/M, Porn With Plot, i hope u like nipples cuz i sure do, poor sam he never gets a break, wink wonk, wow theres a tag for that weird
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-10
Updated: 2016-04-08
Packaged: 2018-04-20 02:54:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4770821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/buttcat/pseuds/buttcat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They fight up to the last, but there's still no way to stop Dean's deal coming due, so he's dragged downstairs right on time. Alone and sick with grief, Sam resorts to dark magic to draw Dean up from Hell. The ritual works, but the thing he gets back?</p>
<p>That's not his brother.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> do u ever write a thing and then realize that like. over half of it is unnecessary garbage? bc that is what happened to this story

Five days after he buries him, Sam digs up Dean’s body.

The coffin is pine, flimsy and cheap as shit, and Sam doesn’t even need a crowbar to pry it open, uses his hands and the butt of his gun and doesn’t run into much trouble at all. Dean’s lying there mostly the way he’d been left, arms at his sides and chin listed a little to the side, but without the benefit of cosmetic interference he looks and smells very much like a fresh corpse, bloated and puffy, blood  coagulated purple at the underside of his arms and ankles, his downturned back.

Sam lifts him out as gently as he can, mindful of his lolling limbs, his spongey joints, sets him down with painstaking care. It’s difficult to look at him, mottled pale as he is, limp and dead and gone –

_Hush,_ he tells himself _. Soon._

He paints his brother’s forehead with lamb’s blood and swaddles him head-to-toe in the ritual cloth he’d prepared, a motel blanket embroidered with silvery sigils, bound through with strands of his own hair. This is old, nasty magic. Dean would hate it. Sam’s past caring.

_Best during the full moon,_ the witch’d warned him, but he can’t wait two more goddamned weeks, can’t wait another  _day._ He needs his brother back. He’s already half mad with grief and it’s only getting worse, Ruby’s cloying false sympathy and Bobby’s silence, the empty seat and bed, the empty air. If this doesn’t work he’ll do it again, and again, until Dean is bones and hair, more rag than flesh, until the grief has eroded both of them down to nothing.

Sam lights the incense and gets out his knife, shining tar-black and scalloped in the fallen beam of his flashlight. There’s no altar for this spell, no offering table and communion cloth, just the knife and the blanket and the words she’d given him to say, scribbled down in smudged ink on the back of a fast food receipt. He doesn’t know the language but for the first time in his life he’s uninterested in figuring it out. Here he is. Here they are. He’s going to do this.     

The chant is short – eleven words – and he says it slow and steady as he cuts through both his palms and grasps his brother by the shoulders through the sheet, pulses out a gentle rhythm with his fingers. He’s not to stop repeating it until he feels Dean move under him so he loops around and back again, squeezes his hands, rocks on his knees, says the words until they’re blistered into the roof of his mouth. Again. Again. He thinks of his brother and all the warm, gold parts that he’s made up of, his steady calloused hands and the soft cut of his jaw, his crinkled eyes, the swell of his shoulder and the dip of his throat. He thinks  _please, please. Anything. Please._

He feels it right away when it happens. The air is suddenly, unforgivingly dense, hard to breathe through and harder to move, and he pants through the chant with a constricted, swampy throat, his eyes and nose burning, his ears popping painfully every time he tries to swallow. For a moment he can still see the treeline but then the flashlight sputters out and so do the stars and he’s trapped in an impenetrable, unnatural dark, vast and empty and solid around the two of them. He can hear things moving in the near distance, the shuffle of their dry footsteps, limbs dragging against hard ground, and he knows he is unwelcome here, wherever here is. A cool, wet jelly, like the mucousy membrane of an eyeball, smears across the back of his neck, and he shudders from head to toe.  _Hold on,_ he remembers,  _hold on,_ and he does, even though he’s choking and struggling, even though he can feel dozens of hideous eyes watching him, mocking his efforts.  _Hold on._     

There is hot breath in his ear.  _That doesn’t belong to you,_ something says, insidious and oily like a spreading mold, slippery with an unvoiced threat.  

Sam doesn’t dare break his chant but he thinks, with every ounce of stubborn consternation he can muster,  _mine!,_ and folds his body over his brother’s as much as he dares, his fingers clamped tight.

_No,_ it says, an amused lilt to its tone.  _Not yours. You know well to whom he’s promised._

_Don’t care,_ Sam thinks.  _Doesn’t matter. Always mine._

_You are wrong, Sam Winchester,_ it says.

A bony, clammy appendage rests itself on his shoulder, and he ignores it. He  _isn’t_ wrong. They belong to each other. Dean is  _his,_ and he isn’t leaving alone, not when he’s so goddamn close. Not when he’s come so far.

Not when he’s got goddamn demon blood in him.

He doesn’t know how to use it – he doesn’t know if he  _can_ use it, here – but it’s  _there,_ buried deep, maybe, but still there. At that kid Max’s house there’d been the feeling of a latch sliding into place, a gear set in motion, and he searches for that feeling now, squeezes his eyes shut and slips backwards into his head.

_Settle,_ the thing at his shoulder says, shifting. Old feathers rustle and fall.  _None of that. Perhaps this is for the best. Perhaps we shall let this go._

“Please,” Sam chokes – a mistake, a Godawful ruining  _mistake,_ and he’s trying to suck the word back into his mouth but it’s too late and the dark is collapsing around him in wild kaleidoscope fissures, the awful pressure sucked away as suddenly as it arrived, and the world shifts and settles and he’s blinking up at the stars, the moon, the jagged treeline.

Nothing has changed. The incense is still burning. His palms are still weeping blood into the cloth wrapped around his brother’s unmoving shoulders and he can’t, won’t let go.

He’s failed. He’d been so close,  _so_ close, and then he’d spoken and fucked up and  _failed,_ doomed his brother to another night in Hell, another hour closer to losing his humanity forever, and it’s entirely his own fault. All his faith and conviction and consuming possessive love and he still couldn’t stand fast for his brother –

And then Dean jackknifes underneath him, head twisting back, fabric hollowed into his mouth with a huge, sucking breath. He’s thrashing like a beached fish, smashing himself against the ground, and Sam chases him close and tears at the sheet indelicately, the two of them flailing together in the dirt. The cloth comes off his head and,  _God,_ Sam’s heart almost stops altogether, Dean dirty and rumpled but blissfully, unimaginably vital, coughing and sputtering through his first breaths, his eyes bright and clear and flashing with life.

He did it. Dean’s  _back._

“ _Dean,”_ he says. “Dean, you’re okay –  _Dean – ”_

 “What the fuck,” Dean chokes. “What the fuck –  _ow,_ Jesus, Sam – get  _off_ me, you asshole – ”

Instead Sam yanks him closer, winding his arms around his back and holding him fast. He can feel his heartbeat, his heaving lungs, and he’s never been so happy in his life, crushing his brother to him next to his empty grave, soil under his nails and in his hair, smoke from the incense still clogging his nose.   

“Are you  _crying?”_ Dean says. “And bleeding,  _Jesus,_ Sam.”   

“I did it,” Sam says, burying his face into Dean’s shoulder. “You’re  _back.”_

“Yeah, Sammy,” Dean says, and there is a smile in his voice. “Here I am.”

 

They leave the whole godforsaken state behind as quickly as they can, driving bound East through the night and into the early morning. Sam can’t sleep, hopped up on adrenaline and triumph, and so he watches Dean drive instead, his hands confident on the steering wheel, his eyes fixed on the road. Five days and he’s starved for contact, starved for his brother’s company. He can’t imagine having waited longer. Watching Dean die was enough. 

They stop in Wyoming and eat a heavy celebratory dinner in a dingy hotel room, General Tso’s chicken and steamed dumplings and mu shu pork, a pizza with sausage  _and_ ground beef  _and_ pepperoni, Twinkies from the gas station across the street. Dean says he doesn’t want to drink and Sam lets him, knows that it’s weird but doesn’t think about it too hard, because he’s  _back_ and otherwise okay and they’re stuffing themselves on horrible greasy fast food and nothing matters except for the two of them, together again.

Dean passes out early, tired from the driving and his full stomach, and Sam tries to get comfortable on the other bed, prickly with sweat and vibrating with leftover energy. He wants to put the past few nightmarish days behind him, wake up in the morning and have his brother at his side – for  _keeps_ this time – but the distance is making him antsy and his brain’s turning over and over in the dusty dark, images of Dean dragged helpless down to Hell, his mouth agape and pleading, a thousand ugly hands on his body, and it keeps cycling round and round in his head, the worry planted deep and irrefutable. He tries to remember different moments, pleasant things, Dean’s hands and face streaked with oil, the glint in his eye when he’s pulled off a heist, but his mind keeps coming back to glistening black eyes and sharp, grinning teeth, the snap of a barbed whip, nails dug into flesh, and he can’t  _shake_ it.   

“Dean,” he says into the quiet, his voice stripped down to wire.

There is a pause, and then an irritated thump. “Mmf. What?” Dean says into his pillow. “’M sleepin’.”

“Sorry – I’m sorry, I just. I can’t stop – .”

“Stop  _what_?”

“Thinking about it,” Sam chokes out. “You. Hell.”

“Hey, Sam,” Dean says gently, and Sam hears the sheets shuffle around, hears Dean hoist himself up onto his elbows. “I’m here, man. You got me out. You don’t gotta worry about it.”

“I know! I know. But I can’t – I’m imagining you, and it’s – .  _Dean._ ”

“Hey, it wasn’t so bad,” Dean says, voice bursting with bravado. “Demons hardly put a scratch on me. Hot as shit, but, you know. I’m built for warm weather, baby.”

It isn’t really funny but Sam laughs anyway, a painful raw thing that turns into a sob halfway through. “I’m sorry I left you,” he says. “I couldn’t save you and I took too long and you were  _there –_ ”

“Aw, dammit, Sammy,” Dean says. “C’mere, okay? C’mere.”

Dean’s silhouette is welcoming and familiar on the opposite bed and he heads toward it willingly, slides in and tucks himself up against Dean’s side so that they’re touching head to heel. He wants to slip his arm across Dean’s chest and cling on but he thinks it’d be too much for his brother, too close, so he keeps his arms curled against his own body.

“I tried,” he says. He stares at the ceiling, unable to face his brother.

“You  _succeeded,_ bitch,” Dean says. “I’m here, okay?  _Look_  – ”

He grabs Sam’s wrist and Sam follows, unbelieving, as he guides it to his own chest, squeezes his fingers down so that his heartbeat pulses through the both of them.     

“Feel that?” he says, his words a low brassy grumble across his breast, a peal of warm thunder against Sam’s palm. “’M  _here._ I’m back, and that’s – it’s a goddamn miracle, Sammy, and it’s because of  _you._ So don’t beat yourself up over it, got it?”

Sam will never fully forgive himself for this, for letting his brother go to Hell  _in the first place,_ when he could’ve been faster, better, more prepared for the damn Hellhounds – but Dean is here and under his hands, alive, his body oddly cold but his heartbeat strong and steady and that’s all Sam cares about, in the end. It’s all he needs, and damn the rest of the world, damn vengeance and righteousness and saviorhood, damn the remnants of his father’s crusade. He is swollen with something bigger than love and stronger than devotion, huge and overwhelming and halfway to sickening, and if he could bind himself to his brother forever, he would. If he could burrow under Dean’s skin, he would.

He weaves their fingers together and grinds down until his bones ache, until he has to grit his teeth against it. “Don’t leave,” he says. There is a grating, ugly desperation in his voice, but he can’t stop it, can’t tamp it down. “Please – never again, or I’ll – . You have to  _promise_.”

“I promise,” Dean says. He is chalk-white in the dim light, his eyelashes a dark spidery fan against his brow, his eyes glittering gem-huge and clever.

They are impossibly close, knees and thighs and forearms jumbled together, a thumb’s width between their noses. Dean’s breath is hot on his mouth. His eyes flick down, settle on Sam’s lips, spear back up again.

_No way,_ Sam thinks, but Dean’s leaning forward and leaning forward and Sam’s just as guilty because he’s leaning forward too until the space between them is negligible and then  _nothing at all_ – and they are kissing. They are  _kissing,_ Sam is kissing his brother like he’d kiss a girl goodnight on her doorstop, gentle cautious lips and slow, even pressure, closed-mouth and it’s still the filthiest thing he’s ever, ever done, kissing Dean on this lumpy motel bed, hands clasped tight between them, his heart pounding out of his chest and down through his arms, his wrists, the place where their fingers are laced together. Everywhere they are touching he is blossoming warm and electric and unstoppably alive and he feels, finally, grounded, solid in his knowledge that they are both there, they are both okay _._

Dean breaks away first, panting ragged like they’d been exchanging more than chaste kisses, his eyes a little wild. “Shit,” he says, trying to extricate his hand. “I –  _Sammy_. I’m sorry, I shouldn’tve – ”

Heady, heart-stopping panic hits Sam full in the chest and he hauls himself up over Dean’s body before his brother can make his escape, crowding him against the mattress. He’s well aware he’s overstepping boundaries but the thought of losing Dean now, after  _this,_ is intolerable.

“Don’t –  _don’t_ ,” he says. “Please – I’ll stop, I  _will,_ if this isn’t what you want, I won’t touch you if you don’t, but – . You don’t get to take that  _back_.”  

“I,” Dean says, and coughs nervously, face tinged red, uncomfortable with the intimacy of their bodies, the brush of Sam’s breath over his mouth. “I don’t really want to. Take it back, I mean.”

“Then  _don’t,”_ Sam says hoarsely, breath blown from his lungs. “Please.  _Don’t._ ”

Dean pauses. He squeezes his eyes shut. “Okay,” he says, and opens them again. “Yeah.”  

He slides his hand up and cups Sam’s cheek, stroking the skin with one broad thumb.

“Sammy,” he says. “You sure?”

“Jesus Christ,  _yes,_ ” Sam says, and kisses him, thoroughly this time, tongue and teeth and hot wet glide. Dean gasps into his mouth, clings to his back and shoulders like he’s a life raft, and Sam clings to him in return, feels him move and breathe and push back and glories in it.

Tentatively, he slips the tips of his fingers underneath the hem of Dean’s t-shirt and glides them over skin that’s feverishly hot, and Dean shivers and whines in the back of his throat in response, leans into the touch like he’s begging for more.  

“Do you,” Dean says, when he pulls away, “are you – ?”

“ _Yes,”_ Sam breathes, and kisses him wildly, slides his hand up Dean’s soft belly and over his chest, the shirt dragging up as he goes. He catches one small, pert nipple with the edge of his palm and impulsively rubs over it with a thumb.

“Oh,” Dean gasps, jerking up. “Sam – yeah, please – ”

His legs are splayed open to allow for the width of Sam’s body and Sam’s hit with a pulse of heat at the thought, like Dean’s as eager for this as he is, ready to let him in. He imagines being inside his brother and  _God,_ not tonight but  _sometime,_ please – .

He’s trying to be good, he really is, but he’s got Dean panting under him like a goddamn wet dream, his lips swollen and wet from kissing, his t-shirt rucked up under his armpits, and Sam is, for the most part, human. He’s unable to stop his hips from bearing down on his brother’s body, an impulsive, quick roll, there and gone again. The pressure feels incredible, sweet relief where he hadn’t even known he’d needed any, but he backs off just as fast, worried that he’s gone too far.  

“Sorry – shit, sorry – ”

Dean glares at him belligerently. “Dude,” he says. He shimmies up a little bit and arches upward and –  _God,_ yeah, he’s hard, that’s Dean’s cock nudging his thigh through the fabric of his boxers. “Don’t fuckin’  _apologize.”_

“Oh, fuck,” Sam says helplessly, and now it’s impossible to stop the forward roll of his hips, impossible even to try, impossible that he ever had. He doesn’t want to come like this, rubbing off on his brother’s thigh, but it seems inevitable now that he’s started, unavoidable. Dean is grinding against him, too, pleased little grunts and throaty groans falling from his lips, proof that he’s enjoying this at least as much, and it’s torture, it’s misery, it’s somehow the best goddamn sex he’s ever had even though they’re both still in their clothes. He is hurtling down a long dark tunnel and he can’t hold up, he  _can’t –_

“S – Sam,” Dean says. “Can I – I wanna blow you, okay? Fuck. I wanna taste you, please – ”

“Oh,  _fuck,”_ Sam says, and comes in his boxer shorts, his hands latched onto Dean’s shoulders, tension shuddering through his whole body. He grinds his way through the last aftershocks, his cock pulsing into the fabric until, finally, he is spent. He collapses onto his elbows, blushing unhappily, unwilling to meet his brother’s eyes.

“Dude,” Dean says. “That was like ten whole seconds.”

 “It was more than  _that,”_ Sam grumbles.“Asshole.”

“Sure. Eleven seconds.” 

“ _Okay._ You gonna make fun of me, or can I get you off?”

“Well, hey. That can be arranged, no problem.” Dean stretches back on the bed, purely bacchanal with his bared chest and his bowed legs, his arms splayed lazy over his head. He follows Sam with half-lidded eyes.   

“Can I – ?” Sam says, his hands lighting on his brother’s waistband. Below them, through the fabric, the outline of Dean’s cock is obscenely thick. There is a wet patch collecting at the front beside the bulge of the head.   

“Be my guest,” Dean says, tilting his hips upward, and Sam slides the boxers gently down. Dean’s cock springs up to rest on his belly, flushed red and dripping wet at the tip.  _I wanna taste you,_ Sam remembers, and shivers. His dick’s trying valiantly to get hard again, but it’s late, and he’s exhausted, and not even the sight of Dean sliding his fingers through the slick on his stomach can spur him to get it up.   

He’ll just have to do his best on his own.

He leans over and Dean, ready for a kiss, moves to meet him, but instead Sam lowers his head and kisses the skin of his pectoral.

"Sam -  _oh,"_ Dean says, as Sam licks over his nipple, tonging broad, slow strokes over the pebbled pink skin. "Mm. Yeah."

Sam teases at the tip with the pointed end of his tongue and Dean squirms, pushing up for more, his breathing coming harsh and loud in the still room. His hands are fisted in the bedsheets and his hips are twitching uselessly into the air, his cock bobbing and leaking onto his stomach. Sam runs a hand down Dean's torso and keeps it just over the cut of his hip, refusing, for now, to move it any further.

Dean makes a belligerent noise and thrusts up toward his hand, but Sam refuses to indulge him. Instead, he closes his lips over the nipple and sucks, his tongue running over and around what he's got in his mouth. He catches it between his teeth, careful not to bite down hard - Dean's so  _sensitive -_ and rolls it gently through them, and Dean arches up on the bed and cries out.

"Fuck,  _Sam -_ please, for the love of  _God."_

"Hm?" Sam says. He pulls back and squeezes the nipple between two fingers, plucking at it, and Dean tilts his head all the way back, baring the long white line of his throat as it works through a breath, a swallow.  

"Touch me,  _please,"_ he begs. 

It's difficult to say no to. Sam reaches down and closes his fist around Dean's cock and squeezes, and Dean lets out a long, satisfied moan. Sam pumps him up and down and he follows, fucking into his hand, leaking like a faucet. He has his heels planted in the bed so he can better thrust up, and his legs are spread so desperately wide that Sam can see goddamn near  _everything,_ the pinkish skin of his inner thighs, the rippling, flexing globes of his ass, the shadowed suggestion of his tiny hole. With his free hand Sam glides his fingers past Dean's balls and rubs against his perineum, dips them lower to graze his rim, and Dean shudders and spurts in his hand, coming violently, thick jets of it striping across his chest.

He falls back into the pillows, breathing hard. "Holy shit, Sammy," he says. He has his boxers still tangled around one ankle. "Damn."

"You okay?" Sam says.

"Awesome," he says, grinning. Color is still high in his cheeks and his hair is rumpled.

Sam moves to slide off the bed, and Dean watches him nervously.  

"Just gonna go get something to wash off with," Sam says, limping toward the bathroom. Now that he's gotten them both off, the squelch of come in his boxer shorts is entirely unpleasant. 

He wipes them up and they curl up together. The night is sinking into him at last, making his head heavy and his limbs leaden, his thoughts sluggish and slow. It settles around the warm, bright glow in his chest -  _Dean, Dean, Dean_ \- and he falls, gratefully, into sleep. 

 

 

 

It’s perfect. It’s everything Sam could want, and then some. He never thought he’d be glad to go back to hunting, but the two of them working together, the perfect oiled symmetry of their work, and then after their controlled collapse into bed – there’s nowhere else he’d rather be.

Everything goes to shit in Nebraska.

Sam’s woken up at around noon by his cellphone. The bed is cold and empty beside him and there’s a note on the nightstand in Dean’s chickenscratch: GONE FOR DONUTS + CAF. He smiles at it fondly.

The phone goes on ringing insistently and he squints at it until the wobbly neon blurs on the display become recognizable numbers. He doesn’t recognize the sequence at all but that isn’t particularly uncommon given his pool of paranoid, psychotic colleagues, so he picks up prepared to deal with some ornery white-trash uncle who’s caught hisself a vampire.

“Hello?” he says, falling back on the pillow.    

The voice at the other end is distorted and unsteady with static, but it’s unmistakably Dean. “Jesus fucking Christ,” he says. “Sammy. Shit, Sammy.”

He sounds terrible, worn and weary and on the verge of tears, and Sam’s hackles go straight up. “Dean? Hey, are you okay?”

“I’m _great._ I’m fucking _amazing.”_

“Uh,” says Sam. “O _kay._ You sure? ‘Cuz you sound like shit, man.”

Dean gives a strangled, wet laugh. “Yeah, and you sound like Mariah Carey. Listen – I’m in Indiana right now, and – ”

“Wait – _Indiana?_ How the hell’d you get _there?”_ Sam does the math in his head: in order to get to Indiana and call back at this hour, Dean’d have to’ve left at _least_ before midnight of the day before, which he’s pretty sure isn’t possible, since they’d been otherwiseengagedat the time. They’d been fucking around until threeish, actually, so unless Dean’d taken a plane, which is entirely unlikely, there’s absolutely no way he’d gotten so far.

“I just woke up, okay?” Dean yells. “I got no idea what’s going on. Figured maybe you would, actually.”

“What – me?” Sam says, and of all the bizzare, paranoid leaps that he’d expected his brother to take, this is not one of them. “I don’t – ”

“Don’t fuck around with me, Sam,” Dean says, and holy _shit,_ he sounds serious, mad as hell and twice as anxious. “How else could I be here, huh? It was you, wasn’t it? I can’t believe you’d do something so goddamn stupid.”

“Woah, _what – ?_ ” Sam says. Even if he’d had the power to launch Dean out into assfuck nowhere, it wasn’t like he’d actually _do_ it. They were getting along better than they ever had, save maybe when they were little kids.

Unless – . There were the handful of messy pranks they’d exchanged, strung out across four or five states worth of toothpaste Oreos and jell-o packed into the showerhead and an impressive amount of strategically placed porn. But Sam’d never go _this_ far, never do something that held so much to chance. Besides, they’d called that shit off weeks ago like the goddamn gentlemen they were.

“We had a truce, remember?” Sam says. “It wasn’t _me,_ I swear!”   

“A truce?” Dean says. “Well, I mean, I guess, _yeah,_ but what the fuck else’m I supposed to think when I wake up in the goddamn woods – ”

_“Plenty_ of things!” Sam says. He thought they’d gotten past this paranoid posturing bullshit – like he’d _ever_ hurt his brother, _ever_ – . But that isn’t important, not right now when Dean’s upset and pretty clearly panicking, and if they’re going to get through this in once piece, he needs to reign in his anger. “Did you check for – ” he starts.

“Sulfur? Yeah,” Dean says. “Nothing. Ain’t nobody else here, either, just me and some big-ass trees. I gotta tell you, man, the list of suspects is pretty slim, considering.”

“For fuck’s – _Dean –_ ”Sam sputters, his good intentions taking a flying leap out the window. “God, why are you so – ”

“Save it,” Dean sighs. “Look, I just wanna get back, okay? Where are you right now?”

“…Um,” Sam says. “I’m at the hotel?”

“That is _so_ not helpful,” Dean snaps. 

“Seriously? Did you forget where we’re – _oh_.”

He breaks off. Outside, in plain view of God and country, the Impala pulls into the parking lot and parks a few spaces away from their door. Dean’s sitting in the front seat, one hand on the wheel and the other holding his phone to his ear.

Sam glares out the window. “Wow. Okay. Real funny, Dean.” He’d been getting so fucking worried – and Dean’d accused _him_ of breaking their ceasefire, the jerk.

Dean’s still trying to play pretend. “What?” he says.

“Dude, I can _see_ you,” Sam says. “Quit it.”

“…What do you mean, you can see me?”

Sam rolls his eyes. “I _mean,_ you’re sitting _right there_ in your car. Like – in front of the window and everything.”   

“Sam,” Dean says, low and serious. “Get outta there _right now_.”

“Woah, wait – what – ?”

“Whatever that is, it ain’t me.”

The Dean in the car outside breaks into raucous laughter.

“ _Get out,”_ Dean says into his ear, fear thick in his voice. “Get outta there – ”

Outside, Dean’s still laughing. Sam stares at him blankly.

“Fuck,” he says, and then, again, as outside Dean nudges open the driver’s door with his foot and snaps his phone shut. “Fuck.”

He’d done all the routine tests when Dean’d first touched down, silver and salt and holy water and iron and none of it’d made him so much as flinch. And – a lot of creatures can imitate voices, including demons. Hell, they’d dealt with a crocotta not even that long ago, and it’d been so good at its job Dean’d fallen for it himself, trusted that his Dad’d wanted him to die, so it isn’t too much of a leap to imagine that whoever’s on the phone, _whatever’s_ on the phone, it isn’t showing its face for a reason. But –  

Everything’s been so _good,_ so comfortable, that Sam – Sam doubts.

“Address – _address,_ gimme a goddamn address,” Dean’s voice is saying into his ear, and dumbly, blindly, he replies, rattles out the street and town and state of the crappy little dump they’ve been holed up in for the last three days, busted air-con but a scummy pool they’d made good use out of, a creaky, lumpy mattress they’d slept and bled and fucked on, Dean on his knees in the shower, _like that, little brother, don’tcha_ –  

Over the phone Dean’s begging him to _get his ass outta there_ but Sam’s not going to run from a fight, not this one. He’s too mixed up to think straight and he knows it, no condition to take on whatever the fuck’s going on, but there’s something banging through the door that’s maybe Dean and something pleading with him on the phone that’s maybe also Dean and he can’t sit and let this go.

“I’ll call you back,” he says (maybe true, maybe not), and hangs up.

“Sammy!” Dean says. He’s got a stack of pink-and-orange boxes teetering in his arms, the long kind with the flippy lids. “I got you a coupla those nasty-ass bran muffins you like. You’re welcome.”

He’s got smears of chocolate frosting on his chin and nose, and he moves so much like Sam’s older brother, sounds so much like him, that Sam can hardly stay still, can’t keep his mind going to hopeful, magical places, _two of them, crocotta on the phone, hallucination –_

“Thanks,” he says. He sounds like shit, brittle as sugar glass, fragile as porcelain. He takes a huge breath. “I just got – a call,” he says.

“Hey, imagine that, so did I,” Dean says. He dumps the boxes on the table and looks up with a rakish, devil-may-care grin. “’M guessing – and, correct me if I’m wrong – but was it your brother?”

Two long strides and Sam’s across the room with the Dean-shaped thing pinned under him, his knife at its throat. “ _What the fuck are you,”_ he says, jamming it against the door with his forearm. 

It doesn’t look at all ruffled. Its face – _Dean’s_ face – is still split with that cocksure, smarmy grin that it’d effected at the table, but now it’s taken a turn towards the cruel, _I know something you don’t know_.

“Hey now, watch the goods,” it says.    

“ _What are you_ ,” Sam yells again. He’s being careless with the knife and it saws up against the thing’s neck, parts the skin like wet paper, wells up red along the blade.

“Ow, hey, Sammy,” it complains, and Sam bashes its head back, tilts the knife at a dangerous angle against its bobbing, pulsing throat. It flutters its eyelashes at him innocently, its eyes dazed.

“Tell me,” Sam snarls. “Tell me, or – ”

“Or what?” it says. “You’ll kill me? You’ll kill your own brother? I’d say you don’t got the balls, but we both know I know _exactly_ – ”

“Shut _up –_ you’re not my _brother – ”_

“Man, so sure now, huh?” it says. “What happened to, _Dean, you’re okay, I missed you so much – ”_

“That wasn’t – all of it, I _didn’t – .”_ Sam says, his throat convulsing. “All that time – I thought – ”

“Yeah, you sure did. Gotta say, it was fun,” it says. “Didn’t expect you to go for it, but desperate times, I guess, right? ‘Cuz, I mean – you and _Dean? Seriously?_ You think _Dean’d_ ever let you do that shit to him? Not likely, kiddo.”

“Fuck you,” Sam pants. “Just – fuck _you – ”_

“Yeah? One more time for the road?” it says, leering. “Get all the use outta this fine ass as you can – .”

“Shut up! Shut _up.”_

“You know – makes me wonder. You gonna tell Dean? You gonna tell big bro what you were up to? Or, maybe, _I’ll_ tell him – ”

The knife cuts down and in and _in_ and the thing’s head, its mouth frozen in a gape of surprise, rolls off the neck and hits the floor with a sound like an overlarge bruised, pulpy peach. The body follows afterwards, crumpling to its side.  

“Fuck you,” Sam says stupidly. He kicks the corpse and it shrivels back into itself in death like a lumpy man-shaped spider, its limbs curling into its chest in stony rictus, back crimping at an awkward, inhuman angle. As he watches, the head begins to rot in fast-forward, the nose and lips wasting away, skin flaking and peeling up yellow-grey. It looks like a stranger now, its face dusky-white and malleable as dough, thumbprints where its eyes ought to be. _Ghoul,_ Sam registers. This thing he’s been toting around with him, waking up next to, kissing and confessing, it’d been a ghoul the entire time. And Dean – .

Dean is. Somewhere else.     

“Fuck,” Sam says. He sits on the bed. There’s a geyser spray of tacky blood up the door, probably on _him,_ too, his face and neck and shitty stupid souvenir t-shirt. He ought to clean himself up. He ought to burn the body. Instead he puts his head into his hands and laughs and laughs.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> holy shit waht the heck i'm back. im baaaack
> 
> its been a year. a whole year. incredible. i am so sorry lmao. if i haven't responded to a comment you've made on my stuff please know that I LOVE YOU and i have read it!!!! probably more than once!!! u guys are awesome + even if you didn't intend it to your support has helped buoy me through dark times. so thank u so so much 4 everything. u r my sunshine

The sky goes from pearly blue to red to black. There’s a knock at the door.

“It’s me,” Dean calls.

“Door’s open,” Sam says. There are glittery pinwheel spirals cozied up against his eyeballs where his palms had been pressing into his face.

There’s a thud and a curse, and the door stops halfway.

“Sam? Sammy, there’s something blocking the door,” Dean says.

The ghoul, Sam realizes. He kicks it away and Dean comes spilling through in its wake, dirty, dusty limbs and hair, smudges of mud on his cheeks.

“Wait,” Sam says – flicks some holy water at him, gets his arm with his silver knife. Dean stands impatiently through the whole business, breathing hard and leaning from foot to foot.

“You’re good,” Sam says, and Dean is all over him, his arms wrapping around him sure and strong, same as they’d been.

“ _Sam,”_ he says, and gives Sam’s back a hearty smack. “Damn good to see you, little brother.” 

“Um,” Sam says. “You too.”

Dean extricates himself enough to curve one grimy, rough palm around the back of Sam’s neck, and he peers up into his face. It is a fond, brotherly gesture, and Sam finds himself leaning into it regardless.

“Huh,” Dean says. “You look good, Sammy. S’good.”

He is smiling and Sam tries to match his expression, skin tight with the effort. It feels wrong. He shouldn’t be _good._ He couldn’t possibly be _good,_ after he’s had the bliss of the past few months wasted into nothing, their work and words and partnership crushed to dust.

Dean coughs and pulls away, his quota for mushy emotion-showing well overfilled, and Sam hardly resists at all, even though his instinct is to grab for him and never let go. There’s no room for that, not anymore.

 He knows the moment Dean spots the corpse, because his whole body goes stiff and unwelcome, a dangerous, tight line.

“Sam. Is that the – ?”

“The thing that came for me, yeah.”  

Dean goes over to it, circles it warily, nudges it with one booted toe. It makes a dry, rustling noise, cicada husks in a jar, dead leaves, as if it’d never been a living, breathing thing to begin with.

“How the fuck did you mistake this uggo for _my_ handsome mug?” he says. He smolders in Sam’s direction, pouty, as if to prove his point.  

“It had your face,” Sam says.

“Yeah, I figured,” Dean says, and runs a hand over his mouth. His nails are torn and bleeding, some of them missing from their nailbeds entirely. “Told you to _leave.”_

“It was,” Sam says, and shakes his head. He isn’t sure how to explain. “I couldn’t.”  

“You thought it was me,” Dean says, and he’s started to look a little ill. “Sam,” he starts, and lets out a huge breath. “Sam, how long did you think – ? How long were you hanging out with this thing?” 

“’Bout four months,” Sam says. He could lie, make himself look better, but, God, he is sick. He feels so sick. He wants, perversely, for Dean to hate him, if only so he can let this go, only so he won’t have to wake up and see his brother alone and restless in the other bed, that cold, old wall rising between them. If only to stamp out the nasty, clotted dregs of the thing he’d thought they’d had between them, the grimy rotten film of lust left clung to his lips, his hands, his diseased, screwed-up brain. 

Dean’s eyes bulge. “Four _months – ?_ Jesus, Sam, and you never suspected – you never thought – ”

“I didn’t,” Sam says. It spills out of him like an oil slick. “I wanted it to be you. I thought – I was going _crazy_ , Dean. I couldn’t hunt, I couldn’t eat – . I _couldn’t._ ”

There’s a thorny, prickling noose tightening around his neck and as much as he wants to supplicate himself at his brother’s feet, cling to his ankles, try to put into words the unbearable shadowed gaping pit of loss that had driven him to do what he’d promised he wouldn’t, he cannot – he _cannot –_ have this conversation.

If he were a better person, he’d say, _pick a hemisphere_. He’d say, _I’m no good for you._ He’d say  _I love you too much and it's going to kill us both._

But he is not. He is filthy. He is greedy. He would rather drag them both to drown than ever let his brother go.  

“Jesus,” Dean says again. “Sammy. I – . Four _months._ Did it even – was it looking for something? Did it hurt you?”

“No,” Sam lies.

"I just dunno why - . Ghouls ain't long-term feeders, so. Why else would it stick around  _you?"_

“Har, har,” Sam chokes out. He remembers this: back and forth. Play the annoying little brother. Swat Dean's hand away when he goes to ruffle Sam's hair. Glare at him, as if he'd ever want to be anywhere else, as if he wasn't starving for Dean's attention. "You're back," he says, grasping for the only piece of good in this whole mess. "For  _real."_

"Hey, guess so," Dean says. "Neat. But, Sam. If I find out you had anything to do with it - " 

"No! I told you, I swear - it wasn't me." _Not for lack of trying._  "I can't, I - don't know how. It'd take a lot of power, I think. To do something like that, where you're - . Resurrected."  

“It wasn't like - I just... woke up,” Dean says helplessly. “By the road, in my jacket an’ boots. Wallet in my pocket. Nobody around for miles, and lemme tell you - worst walk of shame of my whole life, Sammy."

"Dean," Sam says, worry spearing through his chest. "Do you remember? Hell? At all?"  

Dean grins huge and fake and _God, yes, he does,_ Sam knows. 

“Not a thing,” he says. “Pretty sweet, huh? None of the guts, all of the glory. Hey, there any donuts in there?”

“Probably stale,” Sam says. He is forgiven. He’d harbored a ghoul, a pale simulacrum, lavished it with the kind of tender familiar attention the real Dean has probably gone his whole life without. He'd kissed it and held it and protected it whenever it'd been in danger. And because Dean is Dean - Sam is forgiven.     

And he is glad. 

 

 

Sam doesn't want to spend another minute in that goddamn room, so they burn the ghoul quick as they can and get to the car. Dean's practically rubbing up against it, he's so excited to see it. 

“Aw, hey there, girl,” he says, stroking the hood like it's the nose of a horse. “Sam take good care of you? Don’t worry, sweetheart, whatever he's done, I'll fix you up good next shot we get."

"Oh my _God,"_ Sam says. "I didn't like - go drag racing, or anything. The car's _fine."_   

"Fine, but did you pamper her? Treat her like a lady? I didn't  _think_ so."

" _Dean,"_ Sam says, adding a little whine for effect. If this is what Dean wants - if it's what he needs - then Sam's going to do his best to make it real as he can. They will ride this out and practice and practice and eventually it'll be like Dean'd never left, like there was no ghoul, no death, no grand mistake, and they'll be natural and comfortable and  _okay._ There won't even be a scar. He'll have his brother. That's all he needs. Just - his brother. 

Dean plops himself down into the driver’s seat. He shifts around, huge grin stretching his face, and then - stops. 

“Sam,” he says. “ _Sam._ Did you let that – _thing –_ drive my car?”

"Uh," Sam says. 

"Ugh,  _no,"_ Dean says, hands cringing back from the steering wheel. "Seriously, Sam?  _Seriously?_ I can't believe you'd do that to my baby."

"Okay, this is not my fault - "

“It _drove_ my _car._ It got its - its  _ghoul cooties_ everywhere. Jesus. Sam, where’s the wet wipes? We got hand sanitizer or something?”

Of course they don’t have any goddamn _hand sanitizer,_ for fuck’s sake. This is the Winchester Family Vehicle and they don’t require pansy shit like that around _here_ , no _sir,_ wanna get your hands unsticky and you’re gonna use spit and the hem of your shirt, same as the rest of us. Cool it about _unsanitary,_ Sammy, it ain’t gonna kill you – and all the same, Sam turns to rummage proprietarily around in the back footwell, as if there’s anything back there save a loose dollar and Dean’s spare pair of boots.

Twisting around like that gets Dean’s warm thigh up and familiar with his side, not close enough to touch but more than close to understand the shape of it, feel its heat radiating out like the worst sort of halo, and in that heat – there’s his chest plastered across worn leather and his head in Dean’s lap, legs bent awkward so he can keep them under the dash and bend over at the same time, Dean’s hand in his hair – 

 “Nothing,” Sam says, worming back over to his customary place. “There’s nothing – sorry – .”

“Not even, like, napkins? C _’mon_ – ”

“Oh my _God,_ Dean,” Sam says. “Unbelievable.”

He rifles through the pockets of his button down and comes up with a single shredded, cotton-soft tissue, which he thrusts imperiously to his left.

Dean glares at it. “’M not using your snotty tissues to wipe down my baby,” he says.

“They are _not_ – I do _not_ carry around dirty tissues in my pocket. Asshole.”

“Then what’s _that?_ Right there, tell me it ain’t a booger – _”_

“It’s _lint._ That is _lint,_ Dean. It's more than good enough."

"'More than good enough.' Jesus, Sam, you insensitive bastard. It'll be okay, baby, don't you worry. Hang in there."

"Can we  _please_ get moving?" Sam says. "Or do we have to find a car wash for Her Majesty?" 

" _Car wash,_ he says. Incredible. Yeah, yeah, all right, quit it," Dean says, and flicks on the tape deck. If he flinches at the sudden volume, has to turn it down below his usual preferred level - well. Sam isn't going to say anything.  

It's fine. Really.

They'll be fine. 

 

 

When it hits six in the morning and they've both grown crabby and hungry and road-sore they pull over to get a room. Dean asks for a double - and what the hell did Sam _expect,_ anyway, like his actual brother would ever really want to share a bed, he's got no right feeling gutted over something so obvious - and begs off as soon as they've got their stuff in the room.

"Gonna - food, and stuff," he says, and slips out the door before Sam can even grunt an affirmative.

He's alone for the first time since they'd reunited, the room empty and painfully bare, the gap between the beds insurmountable. He is going to sleep there, tonight, and Dean will sleep opposite, and it will be okay. He can move on from this.

He takes off his coat and lays it on the bed, and - huh. There's something in the front pocket - a phone, not his or Dean’s, not one of Dad’s old burners. It’s got two numbers saved in the contacts – SAM, which directs, predictably, back to his private line, and something labeled R, the number for which is vaguely familiar but not enough to spark a memory. It’s the ghoul’s phone, he realizes with a start, the fake Dean’s, the one it’d been using right before Sam'd taken it out. He must’ve picked it up and forgotten about it in the rush to get his to brother. His _real_ brother.

He should burn it. Back it over with the car. Find a deep lake, boat out into the middle, and drop it in.

But.

Letting it go would be good as failure, so - . 

He dials the number.

It doesn't even get through a full ring before the call's picked up. Sam's hair stands on end. 

“Oh, Sam,” someone says at the other end – a woman's voice, wry and self-satisfied, trying for a sultry purr but falling just short. “Hey there, cupcake. I was wondering if you'd call.”

“Who is this," he says. His hand tightens around the phone and the plastic creaks ominously. 

"Aw, you don't remember my voice? I'm crushed. Guess it's the new body, huh? I miss being a blonde."

New body. Blond. R, as in - _Ruby._

"What are you -  _why,"_ Sam says. He'd trusted her. He'd  _trusted_ her and she'd gone and - what, exactly? "Why would you ever - ?How did you - ?"

“Pulled some strings," she says. "Called in a few favors. You're _very_ welcome."

"You - . _Welcome._ You think I'd be _grateful._ For  _this._ "   

"I - . Sam," she says. For a second she sounds genuinely surprised, and a little hurt, but then she reverts back into her usual drawl. "It was a  _gift,_ asshole, and it didn't come cheap. So you better be."

"Do you even understand? At _all?_ What you've done?"

"I gave you hope," she says, and pauses. Lets out a long, tired sigh. "I was _worried_ about you, Sam, okay? After Dean got sent to the big house, you were really messed up, and you wouldn't talk to me. You wouldn't let me _help._ So I did what I could."

"You gang-pressed a ghoul into acting as my brother," Sam accuses, but it's lost its weight.

"It did help," Ruby urges. "Right? Didn't it?"    

It's completely fucked up. It really is. It's also kinda - thoughtful, albeit in a messed-up, demon-logic-y sort of way. Ruby had seen him hurting, and she'd - gotten him a new Dean. 

He has the worst fucking friends.

"You could've told me," he says quietly.

"Would you have let him stay, if you knew? Yeah, I didn't think so. You needed your brother, so I got you your brother. And now he's back for real, so... congratulations, I guess. For now."

"What do you mean, for now," Sam says, his worry ratcheting right back up.   

"Aw, Sammy, baby," she says. "You know your squeeze isn't out of the fire, not quite yet. Don't pretend like you thought Hell was gonna let him skip away, no questions asked. I know you're suspicious about his... miraculous reappearance, and you _should_ be." 

"What do you know?" Sam demands.

"Down, boy. I'm trying to help."

"I know, I - . Just. Please."

"I don't know a lot," she says, and Sam's fist tightens. " _But -_ what I do know is that someone's coming.  _Several_ someones are coming. Some high ranking demons have caught wind of Dean's little prison break, and they're looking to use him. Not in a sexy way, either."

"Use. Like - " 

"Like they need him for something, and I don't know what, but if I had to guess - considering the company - it isn't good." 

"God," Sam says, and Ruby snorts. "Can we - what do I _do?_ How do I keep him safe?" 

"Well," she says. "Good news is, there is a way. Bad news is we gotta meet face to face if you wanna get anywhere. There's shit you gotta see - shit you have to _consume_ \- before we can make any headway against the Powers That Be."

Sam cannot lose his brother again. He won't survive it. He's angry with Ruby, despite her good intentions, and he doesn't trust her to tell him everything, but - if Dean dies. If Dean is used as a sacrifice - if he goes back to Hell -

"Tell me where," Sam says. "And I'll be there."   

 


End file.
